pleavens
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Posts posted by pleavens
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Here's a link to a project that was built using the process I'm advocating. I've added a "walk" modifier so you can see what I was getting at. Also notice how the "walk" has been timed using the constraints in the first choreography action.
Right click and save Test project
Phil
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Using exageration, each step would be different as the character attempts to balance, steady, or keep from falling. But the character is ultimately following a "path" of sorts.
You can still use a basic walk cycle, and then apply an additive action to define the unique aspects of the walk.
If you want, don't use a walk cycle. Just animate the legs to match the positioning determined by the ease value of the basic constraint choreography action.
The process I described can be used with any combination of actions required, I was not saying that you HAD to use cyclic actions to make it work.
Phil
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In your choreography, block out ALL the positions using a path first. In this first choreography action apply the path constraint and animate the "ease" value so that your character stops and goes from place to place at the correct time and speed. You will want to set the ease interpolation to "linier". Also, if the character is to jump, turn away from the path or anything else that is best animated with the model bone, this is the time to do so. The changes will be stored as "offsets" from the path constraint, be sure that these are what you edit as you get this part down. Do NOT use any poses or actions at this time, keep it as simple as possible. Do NOT move on until you are happy with the timing of this whole segment.
Now plan and do your camera blocking, set up as many cameras as needed and concentrate on how the camera frames the action. Again make sure you are happy with the camera work before moving on. If necessary go back to the first step and adjust the ease values to work better with the camera view and timing.
Then add your walk cycle action, and set it's range to effect the first walking part. Do the same with a second copy of the walk, if he needs to walk again, and so forth.
Then create new choreography actions for each of the other things he needs to do, make sure the new action is set to only effect the time it's needed and set the actions higher in the group to "transition to next action"
Now you can go into skeletal mode and animate each of the non repeating actions in a new choreography action. Be sure that the green check mark is next to the action you are editing, and that the action is set to effect ONLY the timeframe that you need it in.
You can then use this technique to add in additive actions like general head movement, blinks and so forth. This is where you would also key in any fixes needed to improve the quality of the default transitioning between actions. Save these for last though.
Finally do any smartskin that may be necessary, ONLY do what is neccessary to fix problems from the camera view.
Done this way there will be no issues with the model bones position. Also each part of the animation will be defined within an easily edited action, while not effecting the rest of the animation. If you keep it to clear logical steps, and don't get ahead of yourself, it will go easier then you would think.
Good luck!
Phil
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Hello everyone,
I've been thinking it would be fun to hold an Animation Master "class" through the forum, and wanted to get your opinions on the idea.
One of the things I've been working on, is a process to create and apply animated displacement maps that are driven by smartskin, thus giving characters surface "skin" and "bones" that moves and distorts without a complex mesh or traditional constrained and/or animated bones/muscle mode smartskin combination.
Some of you have probably seen some earlier posts on this concept, but here's a link to a introductory tutorial page I've started, for anyone who wants to see what this is about.
http://www.clipsandscripts.com/tutorials/d.../displace_1.htm
As this involves creating and applying decals, flattening objects in a pose, painting and testing displacement maps, and then converting the displacement maps to avi's, and driving them with smartskin, it's a fairly complex process.
Would anyone be interested in learning about this process using a system where I post each step involved over a period of time?. I could post a stage of the process, give everyone some time to test and develop their own version, and then move on to the next step. Test projects would be posted, and everyone would be encouraged to provide feedback and support for users having problems. I see this as a potential prototype for the development of ongoing "classes" on the forum.
I would also like to get your prefrences as to having each step presented as a video, or web tutorial.
Anyway, what do YOU think?
Phil
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Graphics card and drivers?
And try 11.1
Phil
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Oh goody! something to look forward to after work.
Thanks, Aaver!
Phil
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I would suspect the view would primarily be the camera. If this is the case then the controls will grow, shrink and twist away from the camera as the character moves.
Must be something wrong with my AM install, something like that would have made it a pretty pointless suggestion.
Phil
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I'm probably pointing out the obvious, but this system can work with a single camera too, freeing up display space.
Just rig the "control" model group with a root level bone. Then translate to and orient like the controls bone to the camera. Now the controls are available from the main camera view.
Here's the modified project for those who are interested.
Fixed Link to Modified Project
Phil
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What codec did you use? my Windows media 9 player was black from end to end.
Phil
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So do you have blueprints to work from, or are you interpreting this as much as possible from existing photos?
Phil
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I've noticed similar problems that occurred when my graphics cards driver settings for 3d, were adjusted for "quality" instead of "performance" (For playing with Arctic Pigs)
Just a guess, but you might check.
Phil
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Check the door for internal patches, doubled splines and the ilk. Also, I've had some models that were ok again (same scenario) after copying and pasting into a new model to rebuild the splines. If there are bones involved, you can use "paste with bones". Then save the new model out as "temp.mdl" and import it back into the original after deleting the door.
Phil
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Double post
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I was wondering if Hash could have a new tool like 'instance' where only the master is editable and the rest is represented in proxy and can be drag into position freely,
We already have that with action objects.
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if you wanted to do a shoulder blade, it may only be necessary to use an animated displacement map on one axis
Your right, I'd love to see someone give it a go. My main use of this technique will be for my Frogger character. I want his arms and legs to GAIN definition as they distort.
In the meantime, I found an anatomy image on the web of the front leg muscles. A quick stop in PShop for some cleaning up, conversion to grayscale, a little motion blur and I had the "straight leg" image. Then I modified that image with the PShop "liquid" tool, moving the muscles to my rough idea of their placement with the knee bent. A quick AVI morph and here's the result. (and this was a low-res image to start with)
I also used the first image as a rotoscope to model a new leg, this way the leg also has a more realistic form to begin with.
Phil
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What happens when you apply more than one displacement decal to the same mesh?
Maps can be turned on and off as needed, but it appears that when they overlap (as either multiple displacement images in the same decal or multiple decals) the second displacement is "lost". So there's the first problem.
And I think the issue of decal jumping will be very difficult to deal with if we are trying to create a solution that can deal with all situations (The TD approach) imagine the arm being moved from full rotation down and back to full rotation forward and up. The decals (for say a shoulder blade) would go through great antics as they tried to match image/frame and percentage from the combined smartskin drivers. It's hard enough to make cps deal with the same situation. This may not be a problem if overall movement of the displacement - from any involved map, covers a relatively small area. I need to do some more tests on this to know for sure.
This is one area where I do think it would be much better if we could influence the placement of the decal during animation, (at least translation) given that, it would be possible to deal with the multiple angles involved by having the bones smartskin control the decals translation, and the decal frame and displacement percentage. I can see how this may be difficult to implement, so currently I would look to other solutions.
Fortunately, unless you are an obsessed TD type, and HAVE to rig a character for a production environment. AM will let you deal with these things on a case-by-case basis. There's nothing stopping one from using non-animating decals for general detail displacement, and then creating animated versions to handle specific cases where the camera blocking requires it. As these can be developed and applied (added to the decals images list) from camera view in the same way that camera view smartskinning can be done, it would only be something to do where it was necessary, saving much time in the process. I would just control the frame and value animation within the choreography to keep things as simple as possible.
Phil
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I need to make square holes on the intake.
Stitch in a spline to define the outline of the "hole" and then extrude it to form a bevel and then the inside of the "hole".
Connect any additional splines with "hooks" that connect in as flat an area as possible, and use 5 point patches to close the rest.
Now, break any splines that are "blocking" the new hole. In extreme cases to keep the shape it may be necessary to make the blocking splines non rendering by adding additional cps to them.
Hope this helps.
Phil
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Sweet!!!
Definately going to try this out!
I can see Balrogs muscles flexing as he moves to swat the elf.
I suppose the next thing is to figure out how to apply this to shoulder blade situations that have more than one "degree of movement".If you did it on a case by case basis, where the goal is only to simulate what is necessary from the camera view during a particular piece of animation, it should be no trouble. Just turn on the map that fits the situation, and set the rest to "0".
I see this as potentially a technique for animating cloth without cloth simulation. One of many techniques.A good point, there's nothing stopping one from animating cloth this way. It won't be physically correct, but it will add another dimension to your character.
Here's my latest test where I've also included some smartskinning and texture work.
Phil
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I just wanted to add that I have found a freeware Morphing tool that handles TGA's and keeps the alpha channel intact.
There does appear to be a problem when two displacement maps are applied to the same patch (the second does nothing), but having WInMorph create a tga sequence with channels, will enable detailed control over localized displacement and displacement animation.
Phil
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looking at that map, I'd hardly call it intuitive
It's actually quite easy to paint. The only difference is that you paint a decal for each end of the movement spectrum, and it's applied as a displacement map.
I'd just dodge and burn some, save as the tga decal, and then pop back to AM to see how it looked with the leg straight. Do the same for the second image, with the leg bent, and then let the morphing app do the rest.
Phil
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-Is it possible to see the decal animation not applied to the mesh?
Here's the map used (scaled down, compressed, and converted to Quicktime)
The map is actually inverted from correct, I just used negative values for the displacement.
-The decal is all made just from morphing various landmarks from one position to to another?Yes, the corners are assigned to stay put and then you click and move points that "follow" parts of the map. It only takes a few minutes to set up and run.
The next step is to experiment with sequential TGA's with alpha channels, unfortunately the morphing program I'm using does not handle them as input or output.
Phil
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A follow up on a topic I started here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9186
I've applied the same technique to a full leg with ONE decal for the entire leg. The decal frame and percentage is then set by the bone position using smartskin. The animation shown here is just a simple bone rotation action with NO additional smartskin applied.
Click for shaded/wireframe rendered video
Click for final rendered video
Click for shaded/wireframe backside animation.
The "scar" on the side is caused by the placement of a hook. This test was in 11.1, and I do not know if it would do the same in 11. The whole process took only several hours to do and rendered quite quickly. For those of you who are anatomy experts, please forgive my rough attempt at producing muscle and bone, the idea is to show off the method and no references were used in this test process.
Phil
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Copy everything but the articulated, multiple segment arm, and then "paste with bones" into a new model.
Then delete the unused groups and relationships from the new model.
Phil
Smartskin driven displacement map tutorial.
in (2003-2004)
Posted
Thanks for your feedback!
I should have been more clear with this. When I mentioned the Forum, I was talking about the Hash AM Forums as a whole, not this specific forum.
In my mind the ideal location for this project would be in a new sub-forum called "The Classroom", I have no idea what it takes to get this setup though.
The end result would be a full web based tutorial, the difference is that the students would be participating in how it gets developed. Their input and questions on the process would help guide the development of the content. This way an individuals questions can be addressed and the explanations and projects become available to everyone. The final site will be a reflection of everyones input and my teaching and training development experience. Also, by breaking the process into stages, we will end up with sub-level tutorials that can then be cross referenced as a resource covering a single topic.
This feedback would also give me incentive to get the segments built. Without some ongoing reason and encouragement to do so, it's hard to dedicate the time and energy needed to completely build a tutorial of this nature before making it available.
Ultimately, I'd like to do a full production process from concept to final delivery based on this concept.
Phil